juice boxes are for the wealthy
by haveyounomercy
Summary: When Horio realizes that he is not the most talented at tennis, he turns to Tomoka for help. Tomoka, however, has better things to do; like grocery shopping. Written for the NXYZ Christmas Fic Exchange. One-shot, friendship.


**NXYZ Community Christmas Fic Exchange**

**Title: **juice boxes are for the wealthy

**Written for:** xxTemarixx (look I can spell your name correctly when I want to)

**(Special Message:)** Once I wrote 'Horio moaned', I wasn't able to take myself seriously anymore and the fic just went spiralling into crack, loloops. Hope you enjoy it though, Temari~! And obviously I wrote your fic because my love for these two needs to be resurrected, not because no one else wanted to do it. Oh no.

**Pairings/Genres/Rating:** Tomoka/Horio, friendship and the beginning of romance if you squint, T

**Beta:** miss owl

**A/N:** Not even past the first hundred words, I realized I was writing a summerfic for a Christmas Exchange. I don't quite know if there's an actual plot to this, because if there is then I can't see it. Nevertheless, I don't hate it.

o~

"I'm thirsty," Horio moaned. He was sitting cross-legged on an old wooden chair, using one hand to fan himself and. "Go get me something, Kachirou!"

Kachirou, who was sprawled out on the floor of Horio's basement, shook his head.

"Katsuo, then."

The other boy also shook his head, his back against the wall. Katsuo stuck his legs out and planted himself even deeper into his seat on the ground, making a point that he was not going to move under any circumstances.

Horio looked at the two of them and was severely disappointed in what was surely going to be the Seigaku Regulars line-up in two years. "Hey, if I was Momo-chan-senpai or Fuji-senpai, you'd definitely get a juice box for me! What's with that, huh?"

"Horio, Momo-chan-senpai and Fuji-senpai are Regulars! They're also older than us, so we have to respect them." Katsuo said, his eyes sort of dulled from the heat. "Besides, Fuji-senpai is _scary_."

"I can be scary too!" Horio lifted up his hands in the air and said in his deepest voice possible, "Katou Kachirou, you will go upstairs and get me a juicebox this instant!"

Kachirou simply closed his eyes and tried to block his friend out. "Go get it yourself."

Horio's arms fell limp beside him, and he pouted. It was not an aesthetically pleasing sight by any means. "Guys, I'm your senpai too in a way! Don't you know that-"

"Having two years of tennis experience does not make you our senpai, Horio." Katsuo interrupted, an annoyed look on his face. "And even if we were counting tennis experience, Kachirou would be our senpai since his Dad owns a tennis club, remember? He's been playing for much longer than you."

Horio gasped.

Kachirou turned his head to face Katsuo with a huge scowl, "You promised you would never say that! You _promised_!"

"I'm sorry, it just slipped-"

"Kachirou, how could you never tell me this?" Horio shouted, his chair shaking under him. "That you had more tennis experience… t-that you had been playing longer? This is unacceptable!"

Kachirou winced, shooting a glare at Katsuo. "I'm sorry, Horio!" Then, to Katsuo, "The one thing he was proud of… and now you've ruined it. Great job!"

"I really didn't mean to, I just-"

"I thought you were my _friend_!" Horio pointed a finger at Kachirou, his voice shaking. "And now you've betrayed me! Were you just laughing at me when I was sharing my tennis knowledge, knowing that inside it was _you_ who had more experience? You traitor!

"We can still be friends!" Kachirou said meekly, sitting up with great difficulty. "Just… with different years of tennis experience."

Horio shook his head slowly. "No, we can't."

"Well that's fine with me, then!" Kachirou shouted, pointing a finger at Katsuo. "As long as you stop being friends with Katsuo too, since Ryoma-kun said his slice was better than yours!"

Katsuo's face turned white. "You promised never to tell Horio that!"

Kachirou looked sheepish for all of two seconds before he went back to glaring, "Well you promised to never tell him that I had more experience than him!"

Both of them then turned to Horio wearing similar expressions of dread, fear, and exhaustion.

Horio only stared back at both of them blankly.

"We broke him." Katsuo whispered from his spot against the wall.

Just as Kachirou was about to lie back down, Horio stood up. The action was so sudden that his legs got tangled up with the chair, which nearly caused the chair to fall backwards before Horio hooked onto it with his foot. If it had been a normal occasion, he would have bragged about it. Instead, he only glared at Katsuo and Kachirou.

He lifted his chin, put his hands on his hips, and walked straight out of the room and up the stairs. The remaining freshmen noted that his lower lip wobbled throughout his entire journey.

"…And now you've made him cry." Katsuo groaned, bringing his head backwards to bang against the wall.

"You're the one that started it." Kachirou laid back down, his arms trying to find a cold spot on the floor to rest.

Upstairs, the sound of a door slamming was heard. Katsuo tilted his head, "Should we go after him?"

Kachirou, who had just found a relatively cold patch on the floor to put his cheek against, frowned. "No, he'll be alright. He always is."

The two of them stayed silent, both still trying to cool themselves down.

Katsuo's shoulders fell as he slumped against the wall. "Damn it, now _I_ want a juicebox."

o~

"…and that's when I left." Horio waved his juice box in the air triumphantly, marking the end to his heartbreaking story.

Tomoka held her youngest brother against her hip, thoroughly unimpressed. "Yeah, and? You forgot to tell me about the part on why you decided to come to the supermarket to bug me about your oh-so-sad tale."

"I did not come to bug you!" Horio whined, dropping his juice box in her grocery cart. "I just came to the supermarket to get away from them. Besides, it was the only place I knew that had free air conditioning. I only met you by accident."

Tomoka scoffed and picked the juice box up. "Well, it doesn't matter." She handed it back to Horio. "Now that you've finished complaining about your bruised ego, you can go back now. I have more important things to do than to listen to you whine." Picking up a pack of chips, she checked the nutrition information before tossing it into the cart.

"Oh yeah," he glared, "Like dreaming about your darling 'Ryoma-sama'." Horio clasped his hands together and started to dance down the aisle, "Oh, Ryoma-sama! If only I could date you, or even just grovel at your miraculous feet! Oh wait, I already do that, so no worries! Oh, _Ryoma-sama_-"

Tomoka let go of the cart with a heavy push, keeping her baby brother by her side as the cart smacked into Horio's back. "Shut up, will you? I don't want people to think I know a dumbass like you. And wait, aren't you the one that grovels at Ryoma-sama's feet? With your 'oh my god, Ryoma-sama, teach me your twist serve!' and all that bullshit."

"That hurt!" Horio cried, holding onto his back dramatically. "And never mind that, Echizen's just not aware of my tennis skills yet. He even thought Katsuo was better than me." Horio brandished his juice box at Tomoka's brother. "Katsuo! Can you imagine?"

"Whatever." Tomoka rolled her eyes, pulling her somewhat frightened brother away from Horio. "It's not like it's that big of a deal which one he thinks is better, anyway. As long as you win, it doesn't matter who has the better skills or who has been learning for the longest time." Tapping a finger on her chin, she wondered where the milk was.

Horio's eyes widened as he took this in. Suddenly, he realized that she was indeed quite right. It _didn't_ matter, as long as he won the most games! It was so simple! "Tomoka, you're brilliant!"

"Damn straight." Tomoka grinned to herself as she saw the dairy section. "And maybe if you paid for my groceries, you'd be half as brilliant as me."

"Fat chance. I don't even have enough money to buy this juice box. Juice boxes after all, are for the wealthy! And I am but a small commoner with wealthy parents."

"Then put it away if you can't afford it." Tomoka looked up at Horio, who was staring at her with big, pleading eyes. "No, I am not buying your juice. You think I'd waste the money my parents gave me to go shopping for you? Dream on, unibrow."

Horio put his hands on the end of her cart, tilting his head and smiling. "Please? I'm really thirsty and it's reeeeally hot out!"

"No." Tomoka shoved her cart forwards, but Horio didn't budge. She scowled.

"Tomoka-sama, please buy me this juice! If you do, then you'll be…" Horio looked her up and down. "The prettiest girl who ever wore a green and blue striped tank top with jean shorts and sandals with flowers on them!" Batting his eyelashes, he smiled again.

Tomoka paused. Her little brother reached up and pulled down on a lock of her hair. Frowning, she put him down into the seat on the grocery cart and rolled her eyes. After a long sigh, she nodded. Horio cheered as he started to dance. Seeing this, Tomoka turned around the corner and made it halfway past the yogurts before Horio found her again.

"So can I come over to your house then?" Horio grinned as Tomoka's brother murmured gibberish. "I want to meet your other brothers! Which one did you say was like the awesome me again?"

"The one who is unfortunately like you is Hideo, and it's because he's almost as loud as you are. But before I go on, you are _not_ coming over to my house." A pack of strawberry yogurt was thrown into the cart, much to the brother's delight.

Horio pouted again; Tomoka grimaced at the sight. "But Katsuo and Kachirou are still at my house! And our air conditioner sucks!"

"Man up, Horio."

Groaning, Horio followed Tomoka to the cash register and held onto the baby while she paid. "Hey, what's this little guy's name?"

"He's Osakada Sho," she said as she tried to dig out the little coins from her wallet. "And don't shake him, he's just a kid! I swear to god, Horio, if you drop him I'll-"

"Yeah yeah, whatever." Horio's eyebrow shot up as the cashier started to pack up all the groceries. "Wait, you're not expecting me to carry all those, are you?"

The cashier, a pretty twenty-something college girl, grinned back at him. "If you're a good boyfriend, then you would."

Tomoka snorted. "Oh, he's not my boyfriend. _Definitely not_."

"Hey, I would make a damn good boyfriend!" Grumbling, Horio gave Sho back to Tomoka. Then he grabbed all the plastic bags and with a strange grunting noise, picked them all up. "See? I'm really strong, and I'm good at tennis. Plus, I'm _very_ handsome."

"You're very stupid, is what you are." Tomoka smiled a little, pocketed the receipt, and started to walk in front of Horio. "But you're still not allowed to come over."

Horio frowned, "I bet you wouldn't say that if I was your boyfriend."

"But you're not, so drop it."

"_But_ I could be."

"No, you couldn't. Watch the door."

Horio dodged a narrow head collision with the door before he was struck by the heat from outside, all of a sudden making him drop the bags and wheezing. "Wait, wait wait! I can't… the heat!"

Tomoka turned around to give him a glare. "You have _got_ to be kidding me. It hasn't even been like, five steps from the store exit!" Sighing when she saw that he wasn't about to move anytime soon, she picked up half the bags with one hand, her free arm still clutching Sho. "See, this is why you can't be my boyfriend. I need a strong, reliable man."

"Just you wait, Tomoka. In two years when I'm captain-okay, maybe vice-captain-of the Regulars, I'll be strong enough to be your boyfriend!"

Snorting again, she turned around to raise an eyebrow at him. "I doubt it. Besides, what's got you so fixated on being my boyfriend? Did you fall for my sparkling personality and girly charms?" She winked.

Horio gagged. "Please, I'm just telling you that in two years, you're going to seriously doubt shooting me down now. I'm going to be _such_ a catch."

"The heat must be affecting your brain."

Horio huffed, using his free fingers to pop his collar. "Just you wait, pitiful girl."

Tomoka couldn't help but let out a laugh, knocking into his shoulder with hers. "Don't do that ridiculous collar thing, it makes you look stupid."

"I am Horio Satoshi, king of all tennis players, and you won't tell me what to do!"

Swinging her pile of groceries at him, Tomoka groaned. "Idiot."

"Ah, but idiots are said to have better health and live longer!" Horio shook his head, wiggling a finger at her. "Not only am I going to be the man of your dreams, but I'll also be alive and kicking at your funeral!"

"One more word," Tomoka warned, "And I'll be attending _your_ funeral."

Horio frowned, stopping. "But that doesn't make sense, since I just told you that idiots live longer."

Tomoka blinked. Once. Twice. "Oh, forget it. Let's go to your house. God knows that the sooner I get you to Katsuo and Kachirou, the better."

"Wait, if you're coming to my house, then your groceries will go bad." Horio said with a grin, "Which means that I have to come to your house so you can drop them off. And since I'll be the guest, you'll have to treat me to some ice cream and snacks."

Tomoka lifted up her groceries, her hand clenched into a fist.

"Or we could just go to my house, yeah that's a great idea." Horio edged away from her, wary of what might happen next. After he confirmed that Tomoka would not be able to reach him, he grumbled, "Geez, with that kind of tough act, you could be _my_ boyfriend."

"Horio!"


End file.
